Month: October, 2009

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore
There is a society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more.–Lord Byron

Like this:

I continue to be fascinated by new environmental media. I am so intrigued because I always think about the people creating this work. I always think they must just be depressed as hell. I think they must know too much; reality can be hard to swallow. The movies and books brings tears to my eyes, but they also manage to be uplifting.

As I learn more and do my own research for writing stories I find it challenging not to get lost in a sea of misery. It’s hard not to get swept away and feel hopeless. One day this summer, after a particularly heartbreaking section of a book about a sea animal being too toxic for humans to handle when it died, I said, “Mom we are all going to die.” Wise as ever she replied, “That is true.”

There is not much if you don’t have hope. I suppose this is why the message always ends with we can do it! Si se puede! We can change! I have come to the conclusion several times that we can only be responsible for ourselves. No matter how we want the world to change, and mindsets to alter. This doesn’t diminish our purpose, we should still try to make a positive difference in the world.

It is empowering to be responsible for ourselves because the self is the only thing we do have control over. We get to choose how we are going to live, react, treat others, eat, and study. We might make a royal mess of our own lives sometimes, but its FIXABLE. You cannot control other people, but you can control yourself. This must be the part where the hope for humanity comes in.

And I feel like, given the choice, most people want to be better. But the way we designed and systematically destroyed the world is set up for us to fail miserably at being better. Our neighborhoods are dangerous for pedestrians and bikers, the stores, at least where I live, are far from residential areas and scattered around town, and among hundreds of other problems, one that bothers me the most is that if I had to survive without all of the amenities I have grown accustomed to, without any training, I would probably die. How much more out of touch can we get.

I am not a pessimist or an optimist, not even a realist, really I’ve always been an idealist, probably because I don’t really know what the world is like. I’m not sure if I really want to know.